Surfeit
by Vivian Bloodmark
Summary: After losing his mother, Ducky begins making secretive excursions to the opera, while Jimmy Palmer and a frumpy, middle-aged lawyer attempt to help Ducky turn his tragedy into a triumph. Delightfully Duckycentric.
1. La Traviata

**Author's Note: **I'm a bit visually challenged, so for the sake of my eyes and of providing frequent updates, chapters will be short, and there will be many of them. This fic is, of course, primarily Ducky-centric, but will feature a couple of prominently placed original characters, and a few embellished representations of very minor characters from NCIS. If you're dead set against original characters, I think it'd be better for both of us if you didn't read.

Currently, this story takes place some time after season 7, although it is subject to having it's timeline slightly rearranged to accommodate any turns taken by the plot of the TV series.

Now that all that's out of the way, please enjoy!

All my best,

Vivian Bloodmark

**Surfeit**

By Vivian Bloodmark

**Chapter One – La Traviata**

A little less than a week after the death of his mother, Doctor Donald Mallard spent an evening at the Washington National Opera. The performance was of "La Traviata," the story, by composer Verdi, of a beautiful kept woman whose transformative romance is interrupted when she dies of consumption. The actress portraying the lead role spends the entire last scene of the opera attempting to sing beautifully and die dramatically at the same time, something that no realistic human would ever be able to do. Ducky was well used to the facts of life and the nature of realism, and perhaps for that reason was so ready to suspend his disbelief. Those individuals unwilling to retreat into fantasy did not belong, he thought, at the opera, where even gruesome death by lingering disease managed somehow to be beautiful. The heroine sang,

_If some gentle maiden  
In the springtime of her life  
Should give to you her heart,  
Let her be your wife, for such is my wish.  
Give her this picture  
And tell her it's the gift of one  
Who from heaven, amongst the angels,  
Prays always for her and for you._

The thing that he had the most trouble buying into was the idea of the swan song, the triumphant emotional expulsion of song right before the end. The opera's heroine managed to fit all of her sentiments of love and understanding, of hope for the future of her lover and her promises to protect him from the life beyond into one single, final lyrical benediction, despite her inability to stop coughing up blood. Having spent most of his life working with individuals who had already been dead for several hours, Ducky was unused to witnessing the final moments of a living person, even less so of living people who were awake and able to share last words or confessions with the ones they love. Most recently, he'd been there to watch his mother die, at the end of a wasting sickness and the slowly debilitating onset of dementia that had left her quite unable to have anything even remotely resembling a swan song. Her end had been nothing short of a relief for them both, without any triumph to speak of.

Perhaps that was the reason that Ducky felt so much more comfortable with the dead. The dead were unable to surprise you with any word or action, couldn't provide you with hope or apprehension, were unable to make you worry about any act performed upon them or any outcome of their own behavior. The dead could allow insight, but only by their silence, remaining in a refreshingly, relaxingly unchanged state which only the medical examiner had any opportunity to prevail upon. Dead men told no tales, as the old saying went; they could not lie, could not lead you astray if you knew your job properly and performed your tests accurately. Their state was static and would always remain so, and you never had obligations to them which you found yourself unable to satisfy.

As the actress on stage began to sing through her final aria, someone in the seat next to Ducky sniffed violently. Ducky glanced over to find a small, frumpy looking woman with brown hair streaked with gray, a generic "little black dress" covering her pear-shaped, flat-chested frame. She couldn't have been younger than 40, and yet her eyes, full of tears, were unexpectedly youthful and expressive. Ducky could see the woman's eyes brimming with the pathos of that tragic final aria, and reflected briefly on how hard his own heart had become, rendering him able to watch the end of this opera time and time again without shedding so much as a single tear. It must, he decided, have something to do with the amount of death he was used to encountering at his place of work…or perhaps it was only a testament to the fact that he'd nearly memorized "La Traviata" in it's entirety.

Reaching into his pocket, Ducky discreetly passed a clean handkerchief over to the over-emotional woman beside him, murmuring "Here, madam. I promise, I haven't sneezed in it."

The woman looked up, surprised, and, after accepting the handkerchief and blowing her nose into it, whispered "Thank you…goodness, a real handkerchief. I don't think I've ever met anyone who carries one of those before. I just stuff my pockets with tissues."

Ducky smiled. Inclining his head slightly, he replied, "Donald Mallard, operatic scholar and old-fashioned gentleman at your service." In an even lower, more rueful tone, he added, "I prefer the term 'old fashioned' to the ones my younger co-workers tend to use…such as 'dinosaur,' and 'fuddy-duddy.'"

As the heroine onstage began another dramatically pitched verse, Ducky's seat partner took the opportunity to blow her nose loudly a second time. "Molly," she said, holding out her free, clean hand to him. "Molly Barnes. Thanks for the-!"

The music swelled, and anything else that Molly said was lost on Ducky. They both turned back to refocus on the action, as the heroine began to beautifully and elegantly die.

***

A couple of days later, at noon on Monday, Ducky was crouched on the bike path in Fairfax, VA, pulling a rubber glove on to one hand while he used the other to probe at the prone body of a woman with a gunshot wound through her left temple.

"The cause of death," he murmured, "appears to be relatively obvious, but I'll have to wait until I've got her back on my table before I'm certain. Mr. Palmer, would you please-?"

"Already on it, Doctor," said Jimmy Palmer, cheerfully wheeling the gurney over next to the body.

As Ducky and Palmer pushed the gurney back over to the van, Ducky overheard Special Agent Gibbs giving a few details to his team. Tony and Ziva were listening attentively, while McGee seemed more preoccupied with worrying about whether or not he could effectively rub out with his fingers the dark stain that had mysteriously appeared on the side of one of his expensive shoes. Passing close by McGee, Ducky cleared his throat pointedly, attracting the agent's attention just in time for him to look up and see Gibbs glaring down at him with raised eyebrow.

As her face disappeared into the van, the doors closing around her, Ducky gazed down at the dead woman and wondered what she would say if she could. "If you had the opportunity," he murmured aloud to her, "would you sing?"


	2. Tosca

**Chapter Two – Tosca**

On Friday afternoon, Ducky let Palmer leave earlier than planned. The young man's nervous agitation, and the way he kept checking himself out in various shiny surfaces indicated to the good doctor that Palmer might actually have a date that evening, or at least be about to put himself into a situation where he might meet a member of the opposite sex. With regards to the rarity of such an occurrence, Ducky released him from his duties at 4 o'clock, and remained on his own to do some much needed cleaning and maintenance of his equipment.

It wasn't long after Palmer left that Ducky heard the doors to the lab open behind him, and felt the presence of Special Agent Gibbs standing behind him. Taking his time finishing up the wiping down of one of the autopsy tables, Ducky carefully folded the rag he was using before asking, without turning around, "Can I do something for you, Jethro?"

"How you been, Duck?" Gibbs ran a finger over the newly clean table surface. "Haven't seen too much of you these past few days."

"Yes, well, I've been rather busy," murmured Ducky. "As the last surviving Mallard, it's up to me to take care of the various and sundry funeral arrangements. Mother was a careful, meticulous woman; she would have liked the thing done with proper attention to detail."

"You out all night?" asked Gibbs, "doing funeral planning?" When Ducky only looked at him, expecting further elaboration, Gibbs added, "Abby says she couldn't get you on the phone last night, and not the night before, either. Gonna make her worry."

Not for the first time, Ducky wondered whether or not Gibbs used Abby's affectionate nature as a way of channeling all of the emotions that he found himself the more unable to vocalize. Never in a thousand years would Gibbs have said that he was worried about his old friend, but Abby's concern gave Gibbs an excellent excuse to ask the question without betraying his personal interest. It had always been odd to Ducky that such a relationship, in which interpersonal commentary was so rarely exchanged, could really be called a friendship, and yet he was always forced to remind himself of the great intrinsic trust with which he invested Gibbs. To everyone else on the team, Gibbs was a rather frightening but fiercely competent boss, for whom they'd do anything out of a sense of duty. For Ducky, Gibbs was a man, a man who had once been more human, and who might, again, be someday re-created into the creature of emotional flaws that he had once long ago allowed himself to become.

"Thank you," murmured Ducky, around his reflections. "I'm just fine. I appreciate..." he allowed the phase to trail off significantly before continuing, "_Abby's_ concern. I'm quite all right. I've spent the last few evenings doing some re-arranging of mother's things, and I often don't hear the phone when I'm in the basement."

As he walked over to deposit the used rag into a bin, Ducky felt Gibbs' shrewd eyes following him. "Okay," said Gibbs after a moment, "Just wanted to be sure." Walking over to the door, he paused for a moment to give the doctor a firm clasp of the shoulder before leaving.

Ducky thought about hypocrisy, as he stood quietly in the autopsy lab and wished in the back of his mind that, for once, strong, silent Gibbs wouldn't leave well enough alone, but would instead insist on a friendly confrontation. Ziva and Tony, often as they bickered, were devoted enough partners to insist upon explanations when one or the other of them exhibited erratic or worrisome behavior. There were, of course, reasons why the same did not apply to him. He was older, more mature, respected. Others expected him to be able to take full care of himself.

***

Saturday evening, Ducky, in his best and most recently cleaned dress attire, attended a performance of the opera "Tosca."

Tosca, a story of tragic romance between exceptional singer Floria Tosca and her artist lover Mario, ends, as most really good operas do, with a stage strewn with bodies. After having been tricked into believing that her lover will be spared, Floria stands by, during Act III, and laughs at his acting talent as he is murdered right before her eyes. This was yet another piece that Ducky had seen or heard many times before, and not, as a matter of fact, one of his favorites. Still, the performances were supposed to be very good, and his season pass entitled him to a show, making it seem foolish to him to turn down the evening out.

Around halfway through Act I, someone behind Ducky sniffed audibly. It was a noise he thought he recognized, and, turning slightly around, he found Molly Barnes, wide-eyed, hastily rubbing away tears as she examined the show's program. She was wearing the same black dress that she'd had on the previous weekend, and Ducky noted, with the eye of a gentleman connoisseur, that she'd do well to wear something that did a better job of showing off her curves…that is, if she could find any curves to emphasize.

"Oh dear," he murmured, directing the comment over his shoulder. "why we haven't even gotten to the really sad parts yet."

Molly Barnes was visibly startled, gasping "Oh!" In her surprise, she dropped the handkerchief he'd given her, the one she'd just been using to dab at her face, and had to spend a few minutes rummaging for it under the seat. Finally resurfacing, she whispered breathlessly, "Doctor Mallard!" Coloring slightly Molly made what looked like something of an effort to compose her face. "I'm sorry, it's just…I was looking over the program..you know, with the synopsis in it, and it's such a sad story! To be fooled at the last minute into laughing at the death of your own…oh." Tearing up slightly again, she made another pass at her eyes with the handkerchief, and when she took it away again, Ducky could see the angry red patches beneath her lower lids, where she'd rubbed at them too roughly.

Following his gaze, Molly glanced down at the handkerchief in her hand, and then guiltily back up at Ducky. "This is yours," she said unnecessarily. "I don't suppose…you want it back right now." Dubiously, she looked over the damage her tears and sniffling had done to the piece of cloth. "I'll wash it for you," she said, more decisively. "I'll wash it for you and I'll send it to you. You can give me your address."

Ducky smiled, shaking his head. "No, no. It's yours. You're certainly getting a great deal of good use out of it."

As the opera progressed, Ducky sat back and wondered why it was that so many operas featured artists as their protagonists. Certainly the life of an artist, so fraught with monetary concerns, made excellent fodder for a thrilling storyline. Those who wrote operas were, of course, musicians, artists in their own right, and, as the popular adage goes, one should always write what one knows. What Ducky knew wouldn't necessarily have made a very good opera. Certainly, he reflected, he did go through a lot of harrowing and suspenseful moments, moments which would make wonderful, powerful plot points. Medicine provided enough opportunities for death of a main character for it to serve very well as the premise of a show, and many popular television series had recently capitalized on the lives-in-the-balance nature of the sort of work that doctors did. The difference between Ducky and other doctors was that he was not exactly an artist. He was a detective, a scientist, a man who learned from his work, but did not provide anything in return. He did not create anything, did not produce any product that could take on a life of its own and continue the flow of the story. There would never be an opera about the autopsy lab, because in the autopsy lab, no one got up and sang a swan song, or mysteriously re-appeared after years of being missing, presumed dead. Death was static, and he was only an on-looker, a man who communed with death but did not try to interfere with its processes.

Suddenly, Ducky felt like the room was too warm, uncomfortably stuffy. He already knew how this opera was going to end, and for some reason he was no longer interested in the performances, no longer wanted to see the triumphantly tragic conclusion. It would bore him, and the idea of being bored by death was disturbing, unnatural. Ducky began to collect his things and to shrug on his coat.

"You're leaving?" asked Molly in a loud whisper, from behind him.

"Yes…I didn't realize how hungry I was," he said, by way of excuse. "A pleasure meeting you again, Ms. Barnes."

As he began to stand up, preparing to excuse his way through the crowd of people packed into his row of seats, Molly murmured, "But I haven't got your address..how can I send you your handkerchief?"

Turning back, Ducky intended to tell her that, as he'd already said, she didn't have to, it was a gift. Instead, pausing a moment, he leaned forward over his chair, and murmured, "would you like to get some dinner? After all, you've already read the ending. If you're lucky, I'll sing you Mario's final aria, to give you a better sense of the dramatic conclusion." With a quick smile, he added, "actually, if you're lucky, I won't."

As the two of them moved through their separate rows, stepping on the occasional toe and thoroughly irritating several previously placid opera-goers, Molly said, "oh, no, I'd love that! Do you sing?"

Ducky shook his head, chuckling. "I certainly shouldn't, but it's been known to happen."


End file.
